You need to engage with, not talk to, your customers

The focus of marketing is now on an engagement model and not a sales model, where you provide actual value to your customer or player. Traditional disruptive one-way advertising messages are being replaced with deeper two-way relationships with consumers. As a business, you have to consistently engage your customers; which requires compelling content that is interesting, creates value, and has opportunities for interaction. A true value exchange is one that creates loyal customers.

A key dynamic driving this engagement model is that consumers are no longer captive. A captive audience is one where a message is created and channeled to consumers who passively receive content. Consumers are now the beneficiaries of a power shift. The power shift is from media companies who used to control what consumers saw, when they saw it, and how they saw it. Now the power shift is with the consumers.

As they pointed out in the course, the notion of captive audiences is one that lives in the past, even in the online environment. There is a growing acknowledgement that marketing has changed more in the past one to two years, than it has in more than half a century before.

To succeed in this environment you need both to communicate interactively and add value. Give them something for interacting. It could be tips, discounts, compelling stories, etc., with the key being it needs to be something they value.

Customers expect communication

Consumers now expect two way communication. When they are dissatisfied, not only will they communicate this to you but they expect a (fast) response. Consumers expect a two-way dialogue with brands and personalized ads relevant to their needs. Even if you are sending a newsletter, it should be personalized based on your customers’ preferences.

Go to the customer, don’t expect them to come to you

An evolving opportunity with social media marketing is participation marketing. With participation marketing, you build a team around an event that is going to happen on social media, then have them talk about it and respond very quickly (Super Bowl, Oscars, World Cup, eSports, etc.). Rather than creating the event, you piggyback on to a topic people are engaged with, connect your product or game with that content, and create a conversation with potential customers.

Once you engage with customers, on their terms, you can then bring them to your assets. Reaching people in areas they are most interested in, engaging them with content that is directly relevant and taking them through to your owned resources.

How to create great content

Unlike the Mad Men era, content is no longer about making the brand look great. Good content is now focused on the customer and not the brand. The key is when creating content you should put people first, with the product in the background. Good content should be focused on the customer, not the brand.

At a high level, there are four keys to creating compelling marketing content:

A brand should start with a clear vision, focus or story

The vision should be set at senior or strategic levels

The vision must permeate all levels of the business and there should be a long term commitment to the strategy with clear objectives

The vision must be aligned with and support a brand’s DNA

Overall, a successful content strategy is clear and aligned internally not only in the marketing department but with all decision makers.

Key takeaways

Marketing has evolved to an engagement model, where rather than talking to to your customers you provide them value and engage in two-way communications.

Rather than expecting your customers to see your content or visit your owned media sites, you need to reach out to them where they are, for example when they are online discussing a sporting event.

The key to creating effecitve content is putting people first, with the product in the background

A recent article in the Economist, “Something to stand on,” shows how digital platforms are the heart of the new economy, and by extension the strongest opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors. Platforms provide the basis for people and companies to build businesses, services, features or just about anything. The core building blocks remain stable so that the other parts can evolve more rapidly by combining, recombining, and adding new ones.

Platforms are not a new concept; they exist in the non-digital world but started garnering attention as the software industry exploded in the 1980s. In the physical world, railways could be considered a platform as they allowed services such as mail order to develop. The power grid is another platform, as it facilitated the creation of multiple electrical household appliances. Shipping containers (those big crates on ships) were a platform that boosted global trade.

Platforms, however, started getting attention as an economic driver (and source of business success) with the rise of the software industry. Microsoft identified—much earlier than its competitors—that power and profit rests with those who control the operating system (in its case, Windows). It also saw that the key to creating a successful platform is building a thriving ecosystem around it to gain a network effect. The more programs that run on Windows, the more users will want it, and therefore the more attractive it will be to developers. Continue reading “Digital Platforms: The Center of The Future Economy”

Get my book on LTV

Understanding the Predictable delves into the world of Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), a metric that shows how much each customer is worth to your business. By understanding this metric, you can predict how changes to your product will impact the value of each customer. You will also learn how to apply this simple yet powerful method of predictive analytics to optimize your marketing and user acquisition.

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Lloyd Melnick

This is Lloyd Melnick’s personal blog. I am EVP Casino at VGW, where I lead the Chumba Casino team. I am a serial builder of businesses (senior leadership on three exits worth over $700 million), successful in big (Disney, Stars Group, Zynga) and small companies (Merscom, Spooky Cool Labs) with over 20 years experience in the gaming and casino space.